Archival Footage at Your Fingertips!

The Associated Press and British Movietone recently announced that they will be uploading more than 550,000 segments of archival film footage onto YouTube. The earliest videos date back to 1895 and the site will host over one million minutes of footage – that’s almost two years worth of material!

There are many historically significant events covered by the archive, from the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 to the events of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Alwyn Lindsey, AP’s director of international archive, had this to say about the project: “The AP archive footage, combined with the British Movietone collection, creates an incredible visual journey of the people and events that have shaped our history. At AP we are always astonished at the sheer breadth of footage that we have access to, and the upload to YouTube means that, for the first time, the public can enjoy some of the oldest and most remarkable moments in history.”

You can go and discover this archive for yourself, or you can look at these super cool videos from Texas: